Maxine was rather peeved as she walked towards Silky's nest. It wasn't her class that had done that. Her students had actually made good progress and Maxine was going to teach them the variatons of the essence dart tomorrow. What had annoyed her was how the general had responded to her offer of help. She even remembered his exact words.
"No, Ms. Levings. You are too valuable of an asset to risk in the testing of those devices," he had said. It wasn't the fact that he had said no that angered her or even that he thought she wanted to be a test subject for those things. It was the fact that he had called her an 'asset.' It was like he thought she was some sort of object rather than a person. If he had said he couldn't risk hurting her, she would have been okay with it, but he hadn't. She had really wanted to kick him at the time, but that wouldn't have solved anything. If anything it would have gotten her into trouble.
As Maxine arrived at Silky's nest, she tried to shove those things on her mind by checking on Silky with her spiritual sense. Silky's upper body had almost completely formed. From the waist up, She looked like an adorable eight or nine year old girl with straight raven black hair that only couple inches long. Some of her eyes had vanished, but she still had two sets of them. The second set of eyes were on her forehead and were smaller and closer together than her normal eyes. Maxine looked at the two stumps sticking out of Silky's thorax. They had become similarly shaped to her other legs, but were thicker and shorter. However they weren't secreting venom, so Maxine had a hard time figuring out the purpose of those extra limbs. It wasn't until she noticed pale flesh forming between those two llmbs that it hit her. They were used for pulling someone's crotch in closer.
Maxine's face reddened as she remembered the rumors of arachne breeding practices. An arachne would wrap up any male cultivator that she favored in silk and would rape them. However it was something that they had been forced to do. They were all female and most men were terrified of them for the simple fact that their lower half was that of a spider. Add on to the myth that certain spiders were known to cannibalize their mates and no man wanted to be anywhere near an arachne. That only made it harder for them to find a mate and had to resort to such methods to procreate. Maxine wondered if there was a way to fix that problem now that Silky was the first arachne to appear in this timeline.
Maxine took note that it shouldn't take Silky more than a couple more hours to finish her metamorphosis and hurried off in the direction of the Shadow Cat's lair. She wasn't very hopeful of finding any ores that would be useful to her, but it was worth a short look nonetheless. It didn't take her too long to reach the cave and the Shadow Cat was lounging on the large boulder hiding it's cave. It just watched her as she approached at a jog.
Maxine walked towards the cave while keeping her spiritual sense locked onto the Shadow Cat. She was worried that it may attack her as soon as she enters it's home. However it didn't. In fact she could have sworn it smiled at her.
The cave was alot deeper than she thought. It went at least one hundred feet into the earth before splitting off into half a dozen different paths. She used her spiritual sense to search through each of those branching paths and discovered Twilight Iron ores littered throughout it. Some of the chunks of ore were no bigger than a golfball, but there was more than enough to make a pair of blades.
Maxine quickly went to work mining the Twilight Iron with a pickaxe made of shadow essence and stuffed the ores into her backpack. Maxine avoided the mining around the area that looked like the place where the Shadow Cat slept. She didn't want to upset the Shadow Cat anymore than necessary because it was already being good natured towards her. After she had filled her backpack, she went back towards the entrance of the cave and saw the Shadow Cat standing in the middle of it. Maxine fished out four bronze essence cores and placed them on the ground. It was payment for allowing her to mine the ores and damaging it's home. It trotted over and picked up the essence cores before heading deeper into the cave.
Maxine headed back to Silky's nest. When she had gotten back, Silky hadn't woken up yet and Maxine decided to practice her movement technique that she named Phantasmal Steps of the Shadow Cat while she waited. Although she had only converted a small ammount of the Shadow Cat's movements into those for humans, Maxine did notice a small increase in her own speed and agility. A small increase in speed would mean the difference between a direct hit and a glancing blow. She had plenty of time to practice these movments as she told Lt. Randall, her driver, that she would be in these woods for at least two hours. She wasn't certain how long she practiced her recently developed movments before she heard a strange noise coming from Silky's nest. Maxine turned around to face the noise and there stood Silky. Her face was blank as she stared at Maxine.
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Silky suddenly ran at her and burried her face into Maxine's stomach as she hugged her around the waist. Even her short forelimbs wrapped around Maxine's legs. Maxine wondered where Silky learned the action of hugging from, but didn't put much thought into it as she gently hugged Silky back.
Maxine heard a little girl's voice trying to speak a few times, but didn't interupt Silky's first attempt at speaking. Finally Silky spouted out, "Mama." Maxine was stunned at what she heard. What?! I forced you to serve me and be my pet. How the fuck did I become your mother? And how did you learn to speak?
Maxine quickly touched Silky's mind with her spiritual sense to ask Silky those questions herself. However the little arachne didn't even resist her at all and she got to peer at the few memories that she had. Silky's mind was almost like a clean slate aside and almost innocent in a sense. Maxine rewarding Silky with essence cores for producing silk as well as the affection Maxine had showed her were prevalent in Silky's mind. Somehow Silky had interpreted Maxine's actions as things a mother would do and had adopted Maxine as her mother because of it. Maxine wasn't exactly thrilled about the idea of being the adoptive mother of a fledgeling arachne, but who else did Silky have?
There were other memories, but those were mostly of things that she should avoid. Maxine hadn't realized that spiders only remembered a few things. Maxine still hadn't figured out where Silky learned how to speak and the meaning of a hug from.
None of that changed the fact that Silky now had a new range of emotions to deal with and still had the killer instinct of a spider. Maxine needed to teach Silky to be a good girl or things could become bad for both of them in the future. Unfortunately she didn't think she could manage that if Silky remained in the forest, but first she needed to get the little arachne covered up to maintian her modesty.
Maxine was still being hugged tightly by Silky when she said very gently, "Silky, can you let go of me now? I have something for you." Silky backed away and retracted her little forelimbs to cover her crotch. Maxine dumped her backpack and grabbed the spare shirt she had put in it earlier. She wished she had thought to take it out before she put those Twilight Iron ores into her backpack, but she had been too excited at her find to think about it. It was covered in rock dust, but it would have to do.
Maxine tried to shake out the rock dust and turned to Silky while holding the shirt. She slowly put the shirt on Silky and told Silky to grab it and pull it down into place with her forelimbs. Although it was too big for her, it at least covered Silky sufficiently. Silky reached down and touched the fabric of the shirt with her hands. Silky flashed a smile at Maxine and started to run around playfully. Seems she likes it. I need to show her how to make her own clothes.
While Silky played around in her new form, Maxine tried thinking of ways to remove everyones fear of her. Silky was definitely cute if someone ignored the fact that her lower body was that of a spider. There was no real way to do anything other than to have her become a celebrity and got to have cameras shoved in her face. Although with that plan, all it would take is someone being just alittle too aggressive for all that work to go down the drain as Silky defended herself with brutal efficiency.
At the thought of violence, Maxine started to get an idea. "Silky, come here," Maxine said and Silky came over with a curious expression on her face, "Do you remember when I told you not to hurt humans like me? Nod your head up and down if you do." Silky nodded her head slowly. "I want you to keep doing that along with something else. I want you to save any humans from essence beasts, but only from ones that you know you can beat. Do you know what essence beasts are?" Maxine asked. Surprisingly Silky nodded her head again. "Good! You are such a smart girl. Do you think you can do that?" Maxine said. Silky nodded enthusiastically. "Now there is a reason behind me asking you to do this," Maxine said and Silky seemed to pay closer attention to her, "Humans are scared of you because you are different and more than alittle scary. When you save them from essence beasts, they will be grateful and tell others about how you saved them. Eventually no one will be afraid of you anymore and they will want to give you big hugs like you just gave me." Maxine had tried to keep it simple since Silky's mind was still quite young. Fortunately Silky seemed to understand. She was amazed how quickly this young arachne learned new concepts.
Maxine smiled at Silky and was about to tell her that she was going to leave for the day when she felt the familiar tug of the spiritual mark that she left on Silky's mind. Maxine came to a sudden realization. Silky hadn't suddenly learned anything. She had been remotely learning things from Maxine herself via the spiritual mark. However if she was smart enough to use it that way, Silky could easily use that same link to hurt Maxine. Maxine was suddenly very grateful that Silky had seen her as her mother.
Maxine told Silky that she would be back tomorrow with some books to help her learn to make clothes. Silky was reluctant to be parted from Maxine, but still complied with Maxine's wishes. Maxine felt bad for leaving Silky there, but if she brought her home, Maxine's mother would probably freak out and she wasn't certain how soldiers would react to Silky either.
Maxine needed to make sure tomorrow that Amanda kept quiet about Silky's evolution. Fortunately she had only told Amanda that Silky was undergoing an evolution, but never specified into what.